1985
by aussiebabe290
Summary: The year is 1985. Beca is the girl at the back of the bus, with headphones and plaid shirts. She thinks she's invisible, but not to Jesse. Never to Jesse. Slowly, steadily, through late night phone calls and a growing stack of mix tapes, Beca and Jesse fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do when you're young and feel like you've got nothing and everything to lose.
1. Chapter 1

**September 1****st****, 1984**

"Swanson!" Stacie Conrad bellowed, as Jesse Swanson loped towards the bus stop. "This is our year! Seniors!"

Jesse laughed, as he approached the leggy brunette. "Ready for this Stacie?"

"I've been ready for this my whole life. We are gonna rule the school!"

Jesse grinned as she slapped her hand against his. "Let's do this", he said, as the bus trundled into view.

The first day of school was both the best and the worst, in Jesse's opinion. There were all the new kids to deal with, they had to locate their lockers and their classes, and of course there were the complaints about their teachers. But that year was going to be different. Because they were the seniors of the school, and they were going to rule the school, in the words of Stacie Conrad.

"Back of the bus!" Stacie cheered, as the doors opened.

But their friends weren't sitting at the bench seat at the back of the bus. Instead, a girl in plaid, with big headphones over her ears, was. Donald and Fat Amy and Benji, the people they expected to be lining the back bench, were sitting in the middle of the bus.

"Stacie!" Fat Amy waved, flagging them down. Stacie and Jesse headed towards their seats, sliding into the one behind her.

"Who's that?" Stacie asked immediately.

"New kid", Donald informed them. "And spoiler alert, she's the shortest person on the face of the earth".

"Where's she from?" Jesse said curiously. Barden was a small town. When there was a new kid, everyone heard about them. News spread around that town like wildfire.

Benji shrugged. "Dunno. She's been on the bus since I got on. This afternoon you have to claim the bench, Fat Amy".

"I'm on it". The loud Australian nodded, and Stacie patted her back cheerily.

He was listening to the conversation, but every so often Jesse would glance to the back of the bus. She was so small, like Donald had said. And yet she stuck out. The red plaid shirt that was clearly too big for her, with the sleeves rolled up. The big headphones that covered her ears, the way that she was gently tapping her feet to the beat of whatever she was listening too- maybe even unconsciously.

She may have been trying to make herself invisible, but she wasn't. Not to Jesse.

* * *

Beca Mitchell stood outside the school gate at the end of the day, weighing up her options.

She could walk home from school. Pros: colour in her cheeks, exercise, a chance to listen to her music uninterrupted. Cons: she didn't actually know the address of her house. She had been in Barden a total of three days.

She could call her mother for a lift. Pros: there were lots of them. Cons: her mother didn't drive, so essentially she was completely useless to her.

She could call her father. There were pros to that, but he lived in Maine. And that was quite a drive to pick her up from school in Barden, Georgia.

She could call her grandma. Just to say hi.

She was sitting on the steps of the school, her headphones over her ears. She could see her bus, it was right there. Number 666 (that couldn't have been coincidental).

Even if she found a way of avoiding the bus that afternoon, she still had an entire school year to get through. She couldn't avoid the buses forever, try as she might.

The buses were starting to leave, and Beca knew if she didn't move it, she'd be left behind, stranded. So she picked up her backpack and power walked (it was all cardio) towards the big yellow vehicle.

The kids from that morning had taken the bench seat at the back of the bus, the ones who had glared and frowned and shot daggers her way. She hadn't realised that it was reserved for them. And even if she had realised, she wouldn't have cared.

Her aim for the school year was to make herself invisible, and she was good at it.

* * *

Jesse had spent all day wondering how he'd get to talk to the new girl. As far as he could see, she wasn't in any of his classes (although he hadn't had all of his classes yet).

So when she wandered onto the bus and made her way to the back of the bus, he could have jumped for joy. Only he physically couldn't, because the five of them were wedged into the bench seat and the one in front, and he could feel Benji's ribs.

With her big headphones on, she sat opposite Donald, turning her head so she was staring out the window.

"What's her deal, you think?" Fat Amy asked curiously.

"Why don't you ask her?" Donald said instead.

"Hey new girl!" Fat Amy said loudly, and Beca tilted her head to acknowledge that she's heard them.

"Beca", she said instead, pulling her headphones down so they fell over her neck.

"Beca", Jesse repeated.

"What's your deal, Beca?" Fat Amy said. Blunt and straight to the point. Jesse saw Beca roll her eyes and he bit back a smile, knowing that Stacie would glare at him if he showed it.

She shrugged, pulling her headphones back on. "My goal is to get to the end of the school year without killing anyone".

She may have been trying to make herself invisible, but she wasn't.

At least not to Jesse.


	2. Chapter 2

Beca got home that afternoon before the kids. She thought that was a good thing, because of their reaction when they first saw her, a week earlier. She had been hoping for some kind of greeting, but they had looked at her like they'd never seen her before. She had spent the entire trip to Barden imagining what it would be when she saw her siblings again that she was almost let down.

Nine year old Jamie had glanced at her and Courtney… Courtney was sitting on Chris's lap. Ordinarily that would have made Beca want to throw up, but she had promised her father she'd be on her best behaviour.

For the rest of her life.

Courtney was six now, and still a nail biter. The only one who had reacted to her presence was Brian, who had jumped at her. He was four and a half, and heavy. Her tiny frame had struggled to catch him but she had embraced the welcome.

Beca had followed her mother into the bedroom that she had been told was hers, her duffel bag slumped over her shoulder. Brian had followed her like a puppy, jabbering a million miles a minute to the sister he hadn't seen in years.

"This is your room now Beca", he had said cheerily. "When Mum told Jamie he cried".

"We all have to adjust", Janice had said softly.

There wasn't room in the house for them to readjust, which Beca chose not to mention. She went to bed as soon as she could, just so she didn't have to face Christopher. She had lay there in the tiny room, her headphones over her ears, hoping that the sleeve of batteries her father had given her would last until she had the money to get more.

Beca got home that afternoon before the kids, and she was glad. Because she had the house and her mother to herself. When she let herself inside, Janice was standing at the counter chopping onions for soup, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Once upon a time it had been the most normal thing in the world.

"How was your first day school?" Janice wanted to know, turning around and smiling at her daughter.

"Fine".

"Just fine?"

"Fine". Beca shrugged.

Janice tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear and Beca shook her head slightly, at how alike and yet how different they were. Beca was the mirror image of her mother, slightly smaller, but Beca believed she was the most beautiful woman in the world. When she was a little girl and Janice would read her bedtime stories, Beca had always imagined her mother as the princess.

And then her parents had gotten divorced, and she realised that in fairy tales it wasn't always the stepmother that was evil. That had been a harsh realisation.

"I'm glad you're here", Janice said suddenly, putting the lid on the pot. "I'm glad you're home before the little kids, I've got something to show you".

Beca followed her down the tiny hallway, into the room that her mother and Christopher shared. Climbing up onto the bed, her mother pulled a well-worn box down from the top shelf.

"I didn't get everything when we moved", she admitted. "But I got most of the stuff you left behind".

Beca could have cried, as she poked through the box- things that she had assumed Chris had ditched ten seconds after she had left for Maine. Her copy of the Little House on the Prairie which she had loved as a nine year old, that her father had replaced. Ends of coloured pencils and Polaroids that she had forgotten about. Everything from her childhood that she had missed in the move to Maine that her mother had found.

"Thank you Mum", Beca said softly, placing the lid on the worn but sturdy box.

"I'm glad you came back, Beca", Janice said gently, hugging Beca.

She hadn't had much choice, but Beca didn't mention that. She just hugged her mother, resting her head on her shoulder like she had done when she was a little girl.

"The little kids will be home soon", Janice told her, "and we'll probably eat dinner before Chris comes home".

"Okay", Beca said, letting go. She carried the box into what had been deemed her bedroom, opening the box again on her bed, slipping her headphones over her ears.

Childhood friends smiled back at her, and Beca smiled softly.

Seeing the things her mother had managed to salvage, things that Beca hadn't packed in her move, made her wonder what had happened to the rest of their things. What had happened to the toys and books and videotapes that she knew they didn't have anymore? Her grandmother's wedding china that she had given them, when her parents had first gotten married.

Maybe it was all packed away somewhere. Maybe her mum was hoping the stepmonster was only temporary, like she was.

There wasn't anything to do with her belongings. So she packed it up, back into the box, and pushed it deep under the bed. And changing the song on her tape, she shuffled further up the bed, sitting on the pillow. She frowned slightly at the scraggy old cat (why did they have a cat? Her mother was a dog person) that had made itself comfortable, and she tossed her boot aside.

"Shoo", she said, and the cat leapt off the bed.


	3. Chapter 3

The new girl was so small, and so light.

Jesse knew this because every time their bus hit a pot hole she leapt a foot off the seat and nearly ended up in his lap.

Gripping the window frame, she adjusted her headphones and focused on the passing town.

Jesse was intrigued.

* * *

It was too late for her to find a new seat.

It wasn't that she didn't like her seat.

She just didn't like squashing the boy beside her.

(Maybe someone would leave. Or die. Then she could just take their seat.)

Every time they hit a pot hole, she wound up in his lap, and she'd scramble back to her side of the seat, colour flooding to her cheeks.

* * *

She was in more of his classes than his friends. And they had the same lunch period. When he and Benji got their trays and went to find the girls, they saw her. In her corner, headphones over her ears, like she was trying to block out the world.

* * *

She was.

* * *

She was so quiet, Jesse noted. Aside from a quiet 'here' when her name was called, Beca didn't say a word.

As opposed to Neanderthals they shared a graduating class with.

* * *

"We should adopt the new girl", Stacie said one afternoon, as Jesse shot yet another look at her. Beca was sitting on the step with her headphones on, her eyes threatening to drift closed.

She intrigued them.

She didn't say anything; she just took a seat at the back of the bus. With them.

"We can't just adopt her", Fat Amy objected. "We'd have to initiate her or something into this".

"What exactly is this?"

They weren't a thing. They were a ragtag bunch of misfits that had found each other in elementary school, and couldn't give up on each other after that long. Somehow, they fitted together, and

"We should abduct her with like a pillow case and have a candlelight ceremony and swear her into-"

"No", Jesse cut her off.

Because he might not have known the new girl, but every fibre of his being was telling him that she would hate that. Every fibre of his being way telling him that anyone would hate that. He didn't know anyone who would like that, if he was being honest (although he'd never tell Fat Amy that, he loved her but there was a part of her that scared him.)

"I like her", Stacie said, and Benji nodded.

"I do too".

Donald nudged Jesse and he shot him a look. Benji grinned, and Jesse diverted his eyes.

* * *

Jesse tapped Beca on the shoulder, making her jump. He could faintly her music, drifting out of her headphones, and while he could make out the tune, he couldn't say he'd heard it before.

"What are you listening to?" he questioned, as she slipped her headphones down over her neck.

"My music", she said quietly.

"I know, but what's it called?"

"It's a mix", she said quietly. "I made it".

"You did that?" Jesse's eyes widened. "It's really good".

"Hey new girl, join us for lunch", Stacie interrupted. "Tomorrow".

Beca gave them the slightest nod in agreement. "Okay".

"Don't know why we couldn't kidnap her", Fat Amy murmured, and Beca's eyes widened.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing".

"Ignore her", Benji said awkwardly.

* * *

They were weird.

But oddly enough she kind of fitted in.

She wasn't about to say she really fitted in, but maybe just a little bit.

And a little bit was better than none.


End file.
